DIRT 5

Dirt 5 revives what made the original series so successful. Fun right away without wasting time on adjustments and improvements of all kinds. He thus honors his illustrious arcade ancestors with a very nice rendering. It is thus easier to forgive missing functions that have now become classic in racing games.

Within the entire franchise, Dirt 5 is a somewhat odd man out with even more focus on arcade. One that lets you race nicely uncomplicated, but at the same time is quite limited. The audiovisual potential should mainly be exploited on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S.

Dirt 5's condensed career feels light on variation but the carnival presentation and slick pacing helps stave off some of the tedium. Whilst there's plenty of vehicles, they don't all feel like winners. The course creation does give you something else to pursue after career is over. I've had fun racing around the well-designed courses but I can't help feel this is compromised and a little narrow in scope. If an arcade racer is what you're after, this works nicely.

Difficult to love due to some glaring racing game omissions and zero innovation, DIRT 5 nevertheless entertains with its simplistic arcade handling, fine circuit designs and some delightful visual treats.

Loud, brash, brightly coloured tracks with a rousing selection of cars and racing styles in a game that’s much more about fun than serious simulation.

As great as Dirt 5's presentation may be, the gameplay is lacking. It looks and sounds incredible at times, but there isn't too much engaging content here to challenge players to do more and perform better as the driver. That changes if you're primarily racing against friends online or offline, but as a single-player experience, it feels flat once you peek under the flashy hood. It's fun for a few races at a time, and it's easy to jump in, but it's even easier to drop once you've had your fill.

Despite all the next gen fuzz and the well executed marketing plan, Dirt 5 can't be more than a mediocre racing title from an otherwise extremely talented team. A racing game with a problem at its core: an extremely dull and boring driving experience.

Obviously, PS5 and XSX versions of the game will look better but that doesn’t change the shallow gameplay. The recent Project Cars 3 was too arcadey for its own good and DiRT 5 follows on the same easygoing tracks. The game is just too meh all around. Winning races is always fun but if you don’t need to put any effort to it, it just isn’t all that rewarding or exciting. If you want your racing games easy-peasy, then go for DiRT 5 but those who crave for some real challenge are better off sticking to other, better titles.

DIRT 5 is a new terrain for Codemasters and it’s hard to say that it follows in the line of the previous series. This is meant for casual players to pick up and play and have fun. In this regard, it mostly works.